Vintage Kenner Jabba the Hutt Action Playset

September 15, 2009

It seems fitting that the first item I catalog should be the Kenner Jabba the Hutt playset, as it was the first Jabba item I had as a kid. Of course, nearly all of my Star Wars toys got sold or given away at some point in my adolescence, so this is not the same one I had as a boy. Still, it brings back all the old memories. I like how they incorporated the “pit” idea by having the part of the throne under Jabba open up.

Sure, it was just a tad smaller than the actual rancor pit in the film, but never mind. He’s got a fair amount of articulation (Jabba’s tail even moves if you twist his torso) and the sculpt is pretty good. I’m not sure where the mustard color comes from, but it’s better than the totally green versions we got later.

Click the graphic to the left to view the instruction manual for the playset in PDF format. It tells you how to put it together, and how to fix common problems such as Jabba’s arms or Salacious Crumb’s tail coming off. (Solution: shove them back on.)

There were actually two versions of the box. One was the nice full-color one shown above. The other one was a two-color line art version.

Here is the original TV commercial:

EDIT: Here’s a YouTube video I made recently giving a pretty comprehensive overview of this toy.